FRIDAY is Deadline Day for would-be Chelsea owners to submit bids to replace Roman Abramovich as the most scrutinised billionaire in football.
And it seems there is no shortage of interested parties, with suggestions that as many as 200 potential investors are jostling for position.
Roman Abramovich has been forced out of ChelseaCredit: AP
If it’s any help, I’m willing to make it 201 with an offer of £50 — as long as I can quickly sell for an obscene profit like Abramovich did with all that Russian oil.
It was only two weeks ago that Britain’s most infamous oligarch was panicked into putting Chelsea up for sale.
Yet the queue of prospective buyers is already stretching all the way around Stamford Bridge.
First of all it was going to be a mysterious Swiss mogul in partnership with a couple of American tycoons.
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Then it was some bloke from Turkey swiftly followed by a Saudi media group that definitely isn’t connected with Mohammed Bin Salman, a Mayfair property developer, a Ghanaian gold miner, the owners of the New York Jets, Chicago Cubs, Houston Rockets and Crystal Palace, ex-Liverpool chairman Martin Broughton, Sebastian Coe and Uncle Tom Cobley.
In fact, the only one missing from the list is Aliko Dangote, ‘Africa’s Richest Man’ who has been talking about buying a Premier League team for 20 years without ever putting his hand in his pocket.
If Abramovich really is in league with Vladimir Putin, this would be the perfect opportunity for Russia to destroy one of the western world’s biggest clubs by tying the whole process up in never-ending legal arguments.
The fact that the deal will require approval from the Government as well as the Premier League already means any takeover is not going to happen overnight.
And the fact that the source of the new owner’s wealth is finally going to be properly investigated means it’s now squeaky-bum time in boardrooms up and down the country.
No one is more concerned than tin-eared Newcastle director Amanda Staveley, who has publicly sympathised with Abramovich’s plight.
She says: “I’m really sad that someone is going to have a football club taken away because of a relationship he may have with someone.”
I’ll bloody bet she is.
Because all of a sudden new questions are being asked about the morality of Newcastle being so closely tied to a regime complicit in genocide, human rights abuses and mass public executions.
So why aren’t the Saudis also being sanctioned by the Government and barred from trading? Oh, because they might sell us more oil.
And if we’re suddenly going to be concerned about the ethics of the Premier League’s distant owners, why stop at Newcastle?
What about the Emirati owners of Manchester City, the Chinese conglomerate controlling Wolves, Everton’s recently severed links with Alisher Usmanov, porn barons David Gold and David Sullivan at West Ham and even the fortunes acquired from gambling by the owners of Brighton and Brentford?
The sad reality is that nice guys very rarely become billionaires and football abandoned its moral compass a long time ago.
Whoever finally gets the nod to acquire Chelsea probably isn’t going to be the kind of person you’d want as a mate.
But if that’s the price of finding someone who can keep running the club in the manner to which they have become accustomed, we’ll all hold our noses and look the other way.
EXPENSE CLAIMS
CHELSEA’s pampered stars are starting to feel the pinch as Government restrictions on travel and accommodation spending kick in.
So I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome them to my world of budget hotels and 5am flights on budget airlines from an airport in the middle or nowhere.
And if the people behind the sanctions are serious about keeping an eye on Chelsea’s spending, might I suggest they appoint The Sun’s expenses department to oversee the operation.
Because there’s not a single penny of unauthorised claims which will get past that lot.
